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Even with a good ctr, traffic from these places combined will cost about $7-$9 per thousand visitors. So far, page views are at about 1.5-2 per visitor, as it only take 1-2 clicks to find what you want on the site.

From the numbers, there is no-way im going to generate revenue from advertising.. at least until search engine and word-of mouth traffic can begin to rate the page views per visitor, and get more "non-paid" visitors.

What are the deal with these "Pay for Visitors" companies?
Is that a legitimate way to generate traffic or is it asking for trouble? Many of the companies I have checked come out and say the value they can be for sites which provide advertising. Should I stay away from these? Am I going to just have to wait on the "long term" effects from repeat visitors and word of mouth, and my other more traditional advertising methods?

Yeah stay far away from those types of "guaranteed visitors", I happen to know the the supplier mentioned above uses real traffic and not computer hits but it does not help your conversion rate any. I sold that type of traffic for a few months and did reasonably well doing it but I quite because I was tired of the constant complaints. Even though I was using exit exchange traffic (which is suppose to be the best)the click-through rates where terrible, out of 20-25 some customers only one was reasonable happy with the campaign and they where promoting a free program.

One way to generate targeted traffic to your site is to participate in newsgroup 'conversations'...

Couple of points:

-- Find newsgroups that are relevant to your site
-- Make MEANINGFUL and REGULAR contributions to the conversations, don't try to 'promote' your site. If you attempt to promote your site, you will NO DOUBT be flamed!
-- Include a link to your site in your sig line with a descriptive tag line

You can find newsgroups using the newreader function on your email program, or from Google Groups.

First post here. Was looking for meaningful conversations with fellow webmasters. I agree with Kat whole heartedly. Newsgroups and eventually word of mouth will drive more traffic to your site. Be wary though there are other webmasters and minions of 'other sites' that will try to downplay you and what you are offering. Develop a thick skin. Stand up for your site. Go ahead and promote your site but be creative. I tend to promote alot by helping people with Flight Simulator(Our site focus) that way people see I'm willing to help/support even if it's not one of our 'payware' products. People are alot more willing to part with their money when a rapport has been established. Otherwise you are a big fish like every other trying to pry their dosh away. We charge $12.95 for 6 mo's and $18.95 for 1 yr along with single products. For us and our site it's about trust and technical support. Alot of the schemes you see that 'truly' want to help are merely aimed at driving the intial site traffic up while throwing you a bone. We used to get ourselves on top lists and stuff but in reality we found it was being spammed and used against us. Just one of a million stories. It's politics and you have to run your campaign however and wherever you need to. If you get flamed get right back on your bike and fight. People generally don't give much credence to trolls/flamers and it only adds to your traffic anyway. As long as you don't mention product prices(which happens anyway) it's cool.

You might want to clean up the website a bit, I ran into an error when I tried to access the web design< web design firms category (it tried to download something instead of displaying a page)also most of the listings are gibberish or repeats of the same site. You might also want to ask for a return link when people submit a link to your directory, alot of similiar directories do this an I do not mind as long as I feel they are worth it

I think your first step is to work on your search engine rankings. This is key to any website. Without it you are just going to keep spending money on advertising.

If your going to go the route of the GUARANTEED Visitors and pay per click sites just make sure before you buy traffic you ask the seller how they plan on bringing you those hits. If they can't explain how these hits are generated, it’s most likely a computer or scam. If they tell you via popups, ask for example sites your pop up will appear on. If they can't tell you it could be a foreign site or computer generated.